Handling of inspired vaporized ethanol in the airways and lungs (with comments on forensic aspects)

Collections of expired air and chemical determinations of ethanol concentrations in inspired and expired air showed that during prolonged inspiration of ethanol (vapour)-containing air about 55% was absorbed by adult human subjects. The fractional absorption was not detectably affected by variations in tidal volume (0.7-2.1 liters), nor was it significantly reduced in experiments where, due to preceding oral intake, the ethanol concentration of systemic blood was up to 50 times higher than that of inspired air. In these experiments the difference between the rates of change in blood alcohol concentration (beta 60) during and before ethanol inhalation agreed well with values calculated from measured respiratory absorptions. Mass spectrometric recordings of ethanol concentration in expired air vs. expired volume, taken in a state of steady uptake, also gave absorption fractions of about 0.55, and showed that the concentration in end-expiratory air did not fall below some 30% of that of the inspired air. These and other findings show that a large part of ethanol being inspired is deposited in the airway linings to be released again to ethanol-free alveolar air expired through the airways. It is concluded that inspired ethanol deserves consideration as a source of elevations of blood alcohol concentrations.     

Performance in Public Organizations: Clarifying the Conceptual Space

Performance in public organizations is a key concept that requires clarification. Based on a conceptual review of research published in 10 public administration journals, this article proposes six distinctions to describe the systematic differences in performance criteria: From which stakeholder's perspective is performance being assessed? Are the criteria formal or informal? Are the criteria subjective? Which process focus and product focus do they have, if any? What is the unit of analysis? Based on these distinctions, the performance criteria of existing studies used in an empirical review of management and performance are classified. The results illustrate how a systematization of the conceptual space of performance in public organizations can help researchers select what to study and what to leave out with greater accuracy while also bringing greater clarity to public debates about performance.     

Debating globalization: cosmopolitanism and communitarianism as political ideologies

Economic, cultural and political systems formerly bounded by the borders of nation states are increasingly globalized. Politicians, civil society and other societal actors engage in publically debating issues related to globalization. Whether conflicts consolidate to form a stable cleavage depends among other factors on the extent to which they become ideologically underpinned. As the basis for such an underpinning, we identify philosophical debates about justice between globalists and statists and between universalists and contextualists as raw material that political entrepreneurs active in the public sphere can draw upon. On this basis, we identify four major bones of contention that could provide the core of such ideological underpinning: the permeability of borders; the allocation of authority between levels; the normative dignity of communities; and the patterns of justification. One ideal typical combination of those four components can be labelled cosmopolitanism—combining arguments from globalists and universalists; another communitarianism, combining statist and contextualist arguments. The more these two ideal types feature as political ideologies in public debate, the more do debates about globalization solidify into a new cleavage. We develop a conceptual framework which can subsequently be used in support of empirical research analysing the ideological foundations of globalization conflicts.     

Governing Cocaine Supply and Organized Crime from Latin America and the Caribbean: The Changing Security Logics in European Union External Policy

The logics of the European Union’s policy and practices against narcotic drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have undergone a substantial shift the past decade: from development to security. Based on an empirical mapping of the EU’s drug-related projects in LAC, this article argues that an ‘integrated and balanced’ approach to drugs policy is being replaced by a bifurcation between the broader domains of development policy and security policy. Questions are raised as to how the EU’s projects on development and security might counteract one another, and how the Union’s programme aimed at dismantling transnational organized crime along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe might have unintended consequences. While keeping in mind the shifting tectonics of the international drug prohibition consensus, the article goes on to analyze the increasingly salient security rationale in EU external drugs policy against the backdrop of the EU’s emerging role as a global security actor. In doing so, it touches upon the intrinsic tensions between human rights and (supra) national security.     

Fatah from Below: The Clash of Generations in Palestine

Dominated by a Fatah/Palestinian National Authority coalition, West Bank politics is characterized by authoritarianism, factionalism and an accommodating policy vis-à-vis the Israeli occupier. These features are prominent parts of what Hisham Sharabi called neopatriarchy, a dysfunctional political system that leaves societies internally repressive and externally weak, marginalizing the young and accommodating colonial interests. The resulting alienation and dissatisfaction among young Palestinians have led to two kinds of reaction that bear on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: a well-organized but leaderless popular resistance, and destructive, spontaneous outbursts of violence. The onus is on the elite to reform the political culture, as liberation from Israeli occupation will not by itself improve the dysfunctional organization of West Bank politics.     

Y-chromosome variation in a Norwegian population sample

Y-chromosome DNA profiles are promising tools in population genetics and forensic science. Here we present DNA profiles of 300 unrelated Y-chromosomes of Norwegian origin. The profile is composed of eight short tandem repeats (STRs) and one single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). In more than 2/3 of the haplotypes the modular structure in the 5' end of the minisatellite locus DYF155S1 was revealed by minisatellite variant repeat PCR (MVR-PCR) These haplotypes were also typed for deletions of fragment 50f2C (DYF155S2). Allele distribution and paternity exclusion parameters are given for each marker. The degree of haplotype diversity and its implication for statistics are evaluated. In the 300 samples 177 different haplotypes were encountered, of which 137 were observed once only. Analysis showed that the main source of variation is within the population. The Fst values were less than 0.015 in general. Haplotype grouping by the SNP demonstrated two haplogroups (Tat/T and Tat/C). Haplogroup Tat/C--found in 5.7% of the present material - is the same haplogroup as encountered in 60% of Finnish males [Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62 (1998) 1171]. Mutation analysis in 150 father/son pairs (a total of 1200 meiotic events) revealed an average mutation frequency of 0.0042 (95% CI 0.0014-0.0097).     

A theoretical model of multiple stigma: ostracized for being an inmate with intellectual disabilities

Even though some people are associated with a single stigmatized group, others are associated with several. In order to shed light on such multiple stigma processes, we propose a theoretical model of ‘multiple stigma’ by describing how two stigma-related categories (having intellectual disabilities and being an inmate) merge into a third stigmatized category (being an inmate with intellectual disabilities) that makes it possible to be ostracized for each of these three. We describe how this extensive ostracism is associated with negative psychological problems and antisocial responses. Consequently, we discuss some possible implications for the criminal justice system and future research.     

Lifetime conviction risk—a synthetic cohort approach

How common are convictions? The stigma of a criminal record can have serious social and financial consequences for the individual. It is a fundamental question in relation to any policy how many people will be affected by it. For example, if it is desirable to make sentencing generally stricter, or restrict ex-offenders' employment opportunities, how many people will that apply to? Little is known about how many people acquire a criminal record over their life-course. In this paper, I apply life-table methods to a synthetic cohort to calculate the lifetime conviction risk. The findings show that a substantial proportion of the population will be convicted of a crime at some point. Not surprisingly, the figures for men are substantially higher than for women.